Hunter, on Republican "liberty and freedom..."

The liberty is the liberty to let people die on the streets; the freedom they speak of is the freedom of not giving a damn if it happens.

Entirely true, and exactly why... 

 

On the other hand…

…Harry Reid offers some hope with a welcome blow for liberty. Via Joan McCarter…

Sen. Harry Reid is blocking the National Defense Authorization Act over provisions it contains that seek to direct how the government deals with Al Qaeda prisoners captured by the military. He explained his objections to the provisions in a letter to Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin and ranking member John McCain.

Reid's letter specifically objects to three sections of the 2011 Senate bill: one making explicit the president's authority to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely; another directing that terror suspects affiliated with Al Qaeda or supporting forces be placed in military custody unless a national security waiver is invoked, and a third making permanent certain limits on transferring prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay.

The ACLU applauds…

“There is no reason why, particularly ten years after 9/11 and with bin Laden dead, anyone in the Senate should want to give the president the martial law authority to have the military capture and imprison civilians around the world — including American citizens on American soil — based on suspicion alone," the ACLU's Chris Anders said. "Sen. Reid is saying that kind of proposal does not fit in the Senate’s defense authorization bill.”

Me too.

I support President Obama…

…because of some things and in spite of some others. Among the latter is the continued exploitation of American insecurity for a distressing assault on civil liberties and basic standards of Constitutional justice. While there are no death panels in the health care act, there apparently are death panels within the folds of the National Security Council.

We're a long way down a path that's been traveled before. Jason Kuznicki finds uncomfortable analogies to the present in the history of tyranny, but offers a glimmer of hope...

We already have our Bastille and our Inquisition. This is our Star Chamber. So they’re all quite small, you say? Almost inconsequential? Great. All the easier to get rid of them. Perhaps in our case it won’t take a revolution.

Perhaps.

It won't be easy though. The fact, I'm afraid, is that most people will trade most of their liberty, and all of yours, for a mere pittance of (mostly false) security, which means that a genuine commitment to liberty and justice for all is an almost certain electoral loser at this moment in American history. Neither party gives a damn about liberty. Hell, the Libertarians don't really give a damn about liberty.

They won't, either, until we recognize that the price of fear is too high.

It's time for...

It's time for...

BZZZZT!

Sorry, but thanks for playing. Senator Obama, right here on my TV…

My number one job, if I am elected president, will be to keep the American people safe.

Actually, I don't want to personalize it too much. Just because I haven't heard Clinton enunciate this particular bit of eerily Bushian presidential philosophy doesn't mean she hasn't said it, or wouldn't agree. In fact, a lot of America was probably nodding along with Barack.

But it's not true. It should not be true. It must not be true.

The number one job of the President of the United States is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States - that is, to keep the American people free.

Safety is elusive, perhaps impossible, but the attempt to insure it is invariably at the expense of liberty, and the price of liberty is too dear to spend freely.